Isaac Merritt Singer

Isaac Merritt Singer (Pittstown, New York, October 26, 1811 - Paignton, Devon, July 23, 1875) was an American actor, businessman, and inventor. He made important improvements in sewing machine design and was the founder of the Singer Sewing Machine Company ( Singer Sewing Machine Company ). Several inventors had patented sewing machines before him, but his success was based on the practicality of his machine, the ease with which it could be adapted for home use and paid for in installments.

Biography

Early Years

Singer was born in Pittstown, New York, the youngest child of Saxon immigrant Adam Singer (née Reisinger) and his first wife Ruth Benson. His parents divorced in 1821 when he was 12 years old, which caused him some emotional problems as he had to leave the luxurious mansion where he lived and move to Oswego (New York) with his older brother. There he studied, after which he worked for seven years in precarious jobs until he was 19, when as a mechanic's apprentice he discovered his vocation as a theater actor. His income came from his work as a mechanic, as well as from his work as an actor. In 1830 he married Catherine Maria Haley.

In 1835 he moved with Catherine and their son William to New York where he began working in a publishing house. In 1836 he left town to go as a actors' agent to Baltimore, where he met Mary Ann Sponsler, to whom he proposed. He returned to New York, where he and Catherine had a daughter, Lillian, born in 1837.

After Mary Ann arrived in New York and discovered that Singer was already married, she and Singer returned to Baltimore, where they pretended to be a couple. Their son Isaac was born in 1837.

His first inventions

In 1839 Singer got his first patent for a stone-drilling machine that sold for $2,000. This was more money than he had ever earned and due to his financial success, he opted to return to his acting career. He toured for 5 years, forming a theater group, "Merritt Players", performing under the name Isaac Merritt. Mary Ann also took part in a few performances, calling herself "Mrs. Merritt."

In 1844 he took a job with a printer in Fredericksburg, Ohio, though he soon moved to Pittsburgh in 1846 to found a lumber shop making wooden keys and signs. In Pittsburgh he discovered and patented a "wood and metal carving machine" on April 10, 1849.

At 38 years old, with 2 wives and 8 children, he moved with his family back to New York, hoping to do business with his machine in this city. He got an advance to build a prototype, thus getting an offer to commercialize his invention in Boston. It was to Boston that he moved in 1850 to sell his invention at Orson C. Phelps' shop, where Lerow and Blogett were building sewing machines. Phelps asked Singer to look at them, as they were difficult to use and manufacture. Singer found that the sewing machine would be more reliable if the pitcher moved in a straight line and the needle was straight.

Singer raised money, again, from George B. Zieber, with whom he became a partner, as well as Phelps, in the manufacture of "Jenny Lind's sewing machine," named after the soprano Swedish Jenny Lind. He received the patent to improve the sewing machine on August 12, 1851. When it began to be sold, the Singer model prevailed over the Jenny Lind one, as it was a more practical model.

Consequences of your sewing machine for the global garment industry

Singer's prototype sewing machine was the first to work practically. She could sew 900 stitches per minute, much better than the 40 of an accomplished seamstress on simple jobs. This started the industrialization of garment and textile manufacturing, as a shirt took an hour to make compared to fifteen hours of sewing. before, but these still needed finishing by hand, and the finishers worked piece-rates at home alone, but the massive overproduction by the machines in the factories, caused pressures on wages and unemployment.

In 1911, most of the mainly female staff at the Singer factory in Clydebank went on strike in support of 12 workers who had opposed increased workloads and lower wage conditions (at that time there were 11,500 employees). Although the strike failed, Singer fired 400 workers, including union leaders. Singer's strike was one of the key actions that led to the protests known as Red Clydeside.

In the 1960s, the efficiency of Japanese production brought aluminum-encased machines and products at lower prices that outsold cast-iron Singer machines. The iconic tower was torn down as the Singer Clydebank factory was modernised, but it closed in 1980 and was demolished in the late 1990s.

Personal life

In 1830, at the age of nineteen, Isaac Singer married fifteen-year-old Catherine Maria Haley (1815-1884). The couple had two children before he left her to join the Baltimore Strolling Players. In 1860, Singer divorced Catherine on the grounds of her adultery with Stephen Kent. Their son William defended his mother in the divorce proceedings and was rebuffed by Singer, including in his will, in which William only received $500 from the marriage. Singer's fortune, which amounted to $13,000,000. His two sons were:

• William Adam Singer (1834-1914), who married Sarah Augusta Webb (1851-1909), twin sister of William Seward Webb (who married Eliza Osgood Vanderbilt).
• Lillian C. Singer (1837-1912), who married Harry Hodson.

In 1836, while still married to Catherine, Singer began a 25-year affair with Mary Ann Sponsler (1817-1896). Together, Mary Ann and Isaac had ten children, two of whom died at birth, including:

• Isaac Augustus Singer (1837-1902), who married Sarah Jane Clarke.
• Vouletti Theresa Singer Proctor (1840-1913), who married William Fash Proctor.
• John Albert Singer (1842-1911), married to Jennie C. Belinski.
• Fanny Elizabeth Singer (1844-1909), married to William S. Archer.
• Jasper Hamlet Singer (1846-1922), married to Jane Collier Cook.
• Mary Olivia Singer (1848-1900), married to Sturges Selleck Whitlock, Connecticut State Senator.
• Julia Ann Singer (1855-1923), who married Martin J. Herz.
• Caroline Virginia Singer (1857-1896), who married Augustus C. Foster.

Financial success allowed Singer to purchase a mansion on Fifth Avenue, into which he moved his second family. He and Mary Ann had left their joint acting troupe, the Merritt Players, as their inventions were more successful.[He continued to live with Mary Ann, until she saw him driving down Fifth Avenue sitting next to Mary McGonigal, an employee, whom Mary Ann already had suspicions about. Singer also reportedly had an affair with the sister of McGonigal, Kate McGonigal. Together, Mary McGonigal and Isaac were the parents of seven children (using the surname Matthews), two of whom died at birth, including:

• Ruth Mary Matthews (n. 1852)
• Clara Matthews (1854-1933), who married Colonel Hugh Stafford in 1880.
• Margaret Matthews (1858-1939), who married Granville Henry Jackson Alexander, Esq., Armagh High Sheriff.
• Charles Alexander Matthews (1859-1883), who married Minnie Mathews.
• Florence Adelaide Matthews (c. 1859-1932), who married Harry Ruthven Prat.

And Mary Ann, who still called herself Mrs. I.M. Singer, had her husband arrested for bigamy. Singer was released on bail and, disgraced, fled to London in 1862, taking Mary McGonigal with him. As a result, another of Isaac's families was discovered: he had a & # 34; wife & # 34;, Mary Eastwood Walters, a machinery demonstrator, and had had a daughter in Lower Manhattan:

• Alice Eastwood (unmarried Walters) Merritt (1852-1890), who adopted the name Merritt and married twice, one of them with W. A. P. LaGrove at the age of eighteen in a marriage concluded by Singer.

By 1860, Isaac had fathered and acknowledged eighteen children, sixteen of them still alive, by four women. In 1861, his former mistress Mary Ann took him to court for abusing her and their daughter Vouletti. Isaac in London, Mary Ann began to claim his estate by filing documents detailing her infidelities and claiming that although she had never been formally married to Isaac, they had been married by common law living together for seven months after Isaac's divorce. from his first wife, Catherine. Ultimately, an agreement was reached, but a divorce was not granted. However, she claimed that she was free to marry and did indeed marry John E. Foster.

Singer's second wife, Isabella Eugenie Boyer

Isaac, meanwhile, had reacquainted himself with Isabella Eugenie Boyer, a nineteen-year-old Frenchwoman with whom he had lived in Paris during his stay there in 1860. She left her husband and married Isaac, who already had fifty years old, under the name Isabella Eugenie Sommerville on June 13, 1863, while she was pregnant. Together they had six children:

• Sir Adam Mortimer Singer (1863-1929)
• Winnaretta Eugenie Singer (1865-1943), patron of the 20th century music that married Prince Louis of Scey-Montbéliard in 1887. They divorced in 1892 and she married Prince Edmond of Polignac.
• Washington Merritt Grant Singer (1866-1934), who married Blanche Emmeline Hale and Ellen Mary Allen.
• Paris Eugene Singer (1867-1932), married to Cecilia Henrietta Augusta "Lillie" Graham (1867-1951). Paris was an intimate friend of the architect of Palm Beach Addison Mizner.
• Isabelle-Blanche Singer (1869-1896), who married the French aristocrat Jean, Duke Decazes and Glücksbierg in 1888.
• Franklin Merritt Morse Singer (1870-1939), married to Emilie Maigret.

Singer family tomb in Torquay cemetery

Isaac Singer died in 1875, shortly after the wedding of his daughter to Mary Eastwood Walters, Alice, whose dress had cost as much as a London apartment. His funeral was quite an event, with eighty horse-drawn carriages and some 2,000 mourners, to see him buried in Torquay Cemetery, at his request, in a three-layer coffin (satin-lined cedar, lead, silver-decorated English oak) and a marble tomb. He chose not to make a will.